


Tunguska

by athersgeo



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 14:52:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athersgeo/pseuds/athersgeo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A trip to Siberia brings to light an 0-8-4, a nightmare and an unlikely new friendship</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tunguska

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lds/gifts).



> This slots in after Repairs and before The Bridge. It will probably (and inevitably) be Joss'd, but I don't THINK it contravenes anything we've seen so far!
> 
> All characters belong to people who aren't me. No harm, no foul.

Tunguska

Agent Melinda May occasionally had cause to wonder precisely what higher power she'd offended to have had to deal with some of the things she'd dealt with. Today was rapidly proving to be one of those occasions.

“But, I mean,Tunguska!”

Fitz was almost talking in italics, he was so excited.

“I know! We might even be able to finally solve the mystery of what happened there!”

Simmons was just as bad.

From the driver's seat, May rolled her eyes. It was going to be a long couple of days.

It had all started with a orders from The HUB directing them to the remote Russian region to investigate a possible 0-8-4. Those orders had very quickly been followed up by a demand for a small team to investigate a Russian oligarch's business dealings as there was – to quote Skye's paraphrase – something hinky going on. Coulson had decided to divide and conquer. Thus, they'd flown the bus to a SHIELD outpost just over the Russian border in Kazakhstan and then split up, with Coulson taking Skye and Ward to Omsk for the recon mission, while May was left to take Fitz and Simmons to the location of the possible 0-8-4.

Tunguska wasn't a name that had meant much to May when they'd started, but after hour eight of the twelve hour drive, she now felt she knew more about it than she'd ever wanted to know. And still, somehow, Fitz was managing to come up with new information about it.

May was about ready to beat either her own brains out, or his – and it was even money on which would be the more satisfying.

“What if the 0-8-4 is the reason, though?” Fitz was now arguing. “We wouldn't be able to publish.”

“But at least we'd know,” Simmons argued. “And we would be able to publish. Eventually.”

May attempted to tune out the conversation – which had turned to bickering now – but it was proving difficult. Everything was proving difficult, just at the moment. Ever since she'd held the Asgardian Berserker's staff, things that she'd had safely locked away were breaking through, and the mess with Tobias Ford had just accelerated the process. She hadn't been lying to Ward when she'd said the things the staff made her see were things she saw every day, but it hadn't been the whole truth, either.

While it was true that the events of Bahrain were never far from her mind, May had managed, over the years, to dull the details. The staff brought them all back in glorious – hideous – technicolour. Dealing with Ford – a situation both so close to her own and yet so vastly different – had forced those details even closer to the forefront of her mind. Trying to rein them in the first time had taken years of meditation and the quiet and solitude of the SHIELD records department. What hope did she have of achieving that babysitting two scientists who would, given half a chance, disagree on whether water was wet?

“What do you think, Agent May?”

Fitz's question dragged May back to the here-and-now. Glancing in the rear-view mirror, he was giving her a puppy-keen expression; unfortunately she had no idea what he wanted her opinion on. She settled for giving him an inscrutable smile and turned her gaze back to the road ahead – though not before she'd caught his triumphant smirk.

Clearly, her saying nothing was tantamount to agreement as far as he was concerned. May gave an internal shrug. As long as it kept him happy – and didn't prompt him to wander off on his own. Coulson would never forgive her if she returned a scientist or two light.

Even if, as they started bickering again, it was highly tempting.

It was definitely going to be a **very** long couple of days.

*

Two hours more and they had reached their destination. To Fitz's clear disappointment, it wasn't the site he'd spent so long rhapsodising about, but a clearing some five miles to the west.

“Well this would have been affected by the blast, too,” Simmons offered by way of consolation as she started to unload their equipment from the back of the four-by-four.

Fitz just huffed and started setting up for the DWARF scan of the clearing.

While the two of them worked, May leaned against the vehicle and watched. There wasn't supposed to be anyone in the area. It was remote and largely inaccessible – they'd come in on the area's sole road, and that had turned into something only a little better than a goat track fifteen miles from their ultimate destination – so the chances of anyone doing to them here what Camilla Reyes did to them in Peru were slim. But slim didn't mean it couldn't happen.

The chances of trouble on the Bahrain mission had been slim, and look what had happened then.

An involuntary grimaced crossed May's face. Eyes on the here-and-now; not on the then-and-there.

“Are you all right?” 

May blinked and found Simmons was now standing at her side, giving her an entirely too penetrating stare.

“I'm fine.”

Simmons' expression suggested the young woman wasn't going to buy that, but, to May's surprise, she didn't press. Instead, she simply said, “If you say so. The DWARFs have found something.” And she proffered her tablet to show May a jittery view of the clearing from roughly eight feet above the ground. “There.”

May studied the image for a moment and caught the flash of something silver stuck in the fork of one of the trees. “Which tree is that?”

“This one,” Fitz called from across the clearing. May looked up in time to see him wave his hand at one particular spruce.

“Do you have any readings on what it's made from?” May asked.

“Spectrographic analysis suggests some commonality with tungsten,” said Simmons, flipping to the relevant screen of data. “But it isn't tungsten. It also seems to be completely inert. No radiation is being given off.”

“Meaning?” May prompted.

“Meaning it's not Asgardian,” Fitz supplied.

“And it's not tesseract powered, either,” Simmons added. “Looking at the growth of the tree around the item suggests it's been here since...well...since the Tunguskan Event.”

May blinked. “I thought you said that all the trees would have been flattened, even this far out from the event epicentre.”

“Oh, they were,” Simmons agreed.

“Or most of them were,” Fitz corrected, piloting the DWARFs back to their case. “There were some exceptions, scattered about. The reports from Thor's encounter with Captain America--”

May lifted hand, drawing instant silence. “So it's possible this tree survived the event, yes or no?”

Fitz looked miffed. “Yes.”

“Then, could this be part of the meteor that caused the event?”

“It doesn't scan as part of a meteorite,” Simmons answered, frowning over the data. “Meteorites might come from outside of Earth's atmosphere, but they're comprised of elements we recognise. This--”

“This just isn't,” Fitz finished. He joined them back at the vehicle. “It's unlike anything we've come across before.”

“Not quite,” Simmons corrected, still studying her data. “As I said, it shares some of the characteristics of Tungsten, but it also has a--” She stopped and looked up, an expression of awe on her face. “It seems to be organic.”

May blinked again. “And you're sure it's not Asgardian?”

“Positive,” said Fitz.

May considered everything they'd told her. “We need to get it to the Sandbox,” she decided. “They may be able to identify it, even if we can't.” She glanced up at the sky and took note of the signs of sunset. “But tomorrow. It's been here for more than a century; it's not going to go anywhere overnight.”

“We're staying here?” Fitz asked.

May simply lifted an eyebrow.

“Where?” asked Simmons.

May looked meaningfully at the four-by-four.

“All night?” Both scientists were equally aghast at the concept.

May simply pulled ration packs from the equipment stash and held them out.

“It's official: I hate being in the field,” muttered Simmons, almost angrily tearing into the pack.

May hastily turned away in case either of them caught her giggling. That would be bad for her reputation.

*

Between the equipment stash and the size of the four-by-four, it wasn't the disastrous place to sleep that either of the scientists had thought it would be. There were enough survival blankets to keep all three of them warm and enough seats that they could all stretch out. Not that May had any plans to actually sleep.

While Fitz had very carefully set up a perimeter of sensors and warning devices, May preferred to keep her own watch. Electronic devices could fail or be defeated; the human eyeball was far more reliable. At least, that was what she told herself. At the back of her mind, however, she knew that the real reason had more to do with Bahrain than anything else. The onset of sleep would bring the onset of nightmares, and those she simply couldn't afford. Not here and not with two almost-civilians to look after.

Not that she'd ever call either Fitz or Simmons a civilian to their faces. They were, at the end of the day, SHIELD agents just as she was. And yet... There was an innocence to them both, still. And neither of them would ever profess to being combat specialists. And, she had to admit, they were really starting to grow on her.

Perhaps that was why Coulson had put her on this half of the team, rather than with Ward and Skye. So that she could get to know them better. After all, in normal conditions, they were at one end of the Bus and she was at the other and they didn't usually get a chance to interact. And they had gone to the academy after the events in Bahrain, so most of what they knew about her was myth or flat-out lie.

It would be good to dispel at least one or two of those myths.

Her eyes fell on the tree in which the 0-8-4 was embedded. Was it her imagination or was the top of that tree starting to glow? May blinked a couple of times and looked again. Definitely a glow – a rose-coloured light just faintly showing up against the pitch-black night-time sky. She opened her mouth to wake her companions, then suddenly, she wasn't there any more.

She was back in Bahrain. In the hail of bullets and the showers of dirt. The girl in her arms, gasping with tears and terror. She could see the edge of the compound; the fence that marked where freedom began and captivity ended, and she was running towards it. Beyond it she could see the breakers of the Arabian Gulf pounding on the artificial reef that surrounded this island. The angular blocks jutting out at odd angles and drenched with spray. Just beyond them she could see her salvation. A SHIELD boat, waiting for her. She just had to get there.

Just had to survive.

One of her captors stepped into her path and gestured with a gun.

May skidded to a halt. The girl stifled a cry of fear.

“Hold on,” May whispered. “This could get rough.”

The girl nodded, her matted blonde hair falling across her face. May tightened her grip and then charged.

The man gestured again, then brought the gun up to bear, but before he could shoot, May dropped and slid, feet first, into his legs. Not expecting that move, he fell backwards, screaming in pain and anger. May let her momentum take her on, twisting and rolling herself back to her feet and on towards the fence.

There were shouts behind her. More shots rang out. More explosions either side. But they didn't matter. Getting the girl out was what was important. She didn't know why; she didn't need to know why. Only that it had to happen. Coulson had been specific about that.

But just when she thought she was home and free, more men appeared to block her path. No way to dodge these. She'd have to stand and fight. But how to fight without harming the girl?

She'd find a way.

May lashed out at the first, catching him hard in the groin. A second took a shot to the knee. The third tried to grapple, but May ducked beneath his lunge and drove her shoulder into his midsection.

Three down, more to go.

Four and five took themselves out by trying a pincer movement that May vaulted over. Neither man could stop and the sound of their heads colliding echoed even above the noise and chaos of the escape bid.

That just left the smart ones. The ones who'd bided their time and allowed her to tire. And May was tired. Her arms ached from holding on to the girl; her body was sore from this escape and the battle that had led to their capture and from the 'hospitality' they'd been shown. But one glance down at the matted blonde hair told her that she couldn't give up.

She had to see this through.

A man lunged for her.

May leapt back, aware that the fight had turned and she was once more making for the fence.

He tried again. This time she kicked out at him, but he caught her foot before she could land the blow, and then he tugged, dragging her off balance.

She was falling before she knew it.

For a moment, gravity looked as if it would win.

In the next, May managed to twist and kick the man with her other leg. That kick he didn't see coming and it landed with a satisfyingly meaty crunch. But then gravity kicked in again, and May knew she couldn't avoid this fall. She tried to twist, to take it on her back and shoulders, rather than crush the girl in her arms, but she was only partially successful. The girl hit her head against the stony ground and then went limp.

“No. No. Nonono--”

“Agent May!”

There was a light touch on her shoulder and May's eyes flew open in time to see Simmons' pale face peering worriedly at her from the passenger seat.

“Here,” offered Fitz. “This should help.”

And before May could process what was going on, a plastic cup filled with hot liquid was pressed into her hands.

“It's tea,” Fitz clarified. “For shock.”

May sipped it automatically. It burned a path down her throat, but it cut through her confusion and the last remnants of the nightmare. And that was what it had been, she realised. A bad dream of an even worse memory.

“Better?” asked Simmons.

May nodded slowly. Her pounding heart was slowing; the adrenalin of the fight was ebbing away. She was awake now and back in reality. Only then did it occur to her to wonder just what the two scientists were making of this.

“I saw a blue glow,” said Simmons suddenly. “From the tree. Then I was back, about to die from that alien virus and I was falling.”

“It was a green glow,” said Fitz. “And then I was four, and lost in Edinburgh. People all around me but none of them my mother.” He looked slightly embarrassed, but at the same time, oddly resolute.

They both turned their gaze on May.

For a moment, she thought about lying. This was too personal to share. And yet-- “It was pink, the glow,” she said softly. “And then I was killing the girl I was supposed to protect.”

“All of us reliving our worst moments,” said Simmons thoughtfully. “Perhaps that's what it does.”

Fitz was frowning. “Hey; wait a minute.” He frowned again, as if trying to recall something. “That's odd.”

“What is?” May asked, still gripping the tea cup tightly in her hands.

“I can remember that day – getting lost – but it's...” He stopped. “It's almost as if it happened to someone else. I can't remember the fear any more.”

There was a roaring sound in May's ears. For the first time she actively looked for the memories of Bahrain, only to find them softened. Not gone, but softened as if--

“It pulled our worst fears out and pushed them into perspective,” Simmons realised, a tone of wonderment lighting her voice. “It wasn't my fault.”

May probed her memories again. Simmons' description fitted exactly. There was a new perspective to them, one that she hadn't allowed herself to see.

“This could have such a beneficial impact--”

And suddenly things were back to normal. Simmons was gushing about the applications of such a device. Fitz was speculating its point of origin. And May, fleetingly, considered pushing both of them into the nearest swamp. Then she smiled faintly, knowing that neither of them would see the expression in the still-dark night. She wouldn't have done it on the drive up, because it was unprofessional. She wouldn't do it now because they were her friends and because they hadn't asked awkward questions; they'd just offered hot tea and sympathy.

In their own fashion.

Perhaps it wasn't going to be such a long couple of days after all.


End file.
